Subject:Have You Encouraged Anyone To Join?

I noticed over on the newbie board, there are a few people who are related/friends with other board members. Have you influenced anyone enough to join?

I have gotten 3 friends to join-but all 3 of them only posted once or twice. :\'( :\'( But, they are no longer members-in fact, one is no longer with us. :\'( :\'( :\'(

I have gotten 3 family members to join (1 not meaning to :-\\ ) but the one who is the most active is Don Carlos.

Cat

Subject:Re: Have You Encouraged Anyone To Join?

Written By:whistledogon06/04/08 at 6:43 pm

I got Patty (Bookmistress4ever), Mia (Southern Image) and Cool Hand Logan to join. I knew them on a previous messageboard I was a member of. At the time, Mia had her own messageboard and just before it closed down, I started a topic linking this place.

Mia or Logan don't post much anymore, but I wish they would

Subject:Re: Have You Encouraged Anyone To Join?

Written By:Bobbyon06/04/08 at 9:26 pm

My ex posted on here a few times. That was about it really.

Subject:Re: Have You Encouraged Anyone To Join?

Written By:quirky_cat_girlon06/04/08 at 9:38 pm

A few months after I had joined...I told my sister Beth (midknightdarkness) about this place...and she obviously joined. :)

I've tried to get my friend DJ here...he would be a great addition to the bunch. I'll have to mention it again soon. :)

Subject:Re: Have You Encouraged Anyone To Join?

Written By:mach!ne_he@don06/04/08 at 9:44 pm

I got my cousin to join about 2 years ago. For some reason, he didn't posted much.

Subject:Re: Have You Encouraged Anyone To Join?

Written By:wildcardon06/04/08 at 10:10 pm

There was someone named scarrier that was in the game room for a short amount of time. That was my brother Joel.

Subject:Re: Have You Encouraged Anyone To Join?

Written By:whistledogon06/08/08 at 12:19 am

There were a bunch of other people I got to join, but they posted maybe once or twice, and never came back :\'(

Subject:Re: Have You Encouraged Anyone To Join?

Written By:Howardon06/08/08 at 6:40 am

There were a bunch of other people I got to join, but they posted maybe once or twice, and never came back :\'(

Whatever happened to them?

Subject:Re: Have You Encouraged Anyone To Join?

Written By:CeramicsFanaticon06/08/08 at 11:58 am

Back in 2002, I had my brother and his wife join...but they didn't hang around for very long...

I also got my best friend from childhood to join (NbC)...and she still comes around here pretty regularly... :)

Subject:Re: Have You Encouraged Anyone To Join?

Written By:nallyon06/08/08 at 12:04 pm

Back in 2002, I had my brother and his wife join...but they didn't hang around for very long...

I also got my best friend from childhood to join (NbC)...and she still comes around here pretty regularly... :)

So you actually knew someone from this board since childhood? How nice!!! :) 8)

There were a bunch of other people I got to join, but they posted maybe once or twice, and never came back :\'(

I can sorta relate.In November of last year, a buddy of mine saw me browsing on this site and it caught his attention...so he decided to go to the site himself (on the terminal next to the one I was using), read the frontpage, and the site rules....and he decided to sign up! His username is Euriskoxp, but he hasn't been active in several months. :-\\

Subject:Re: Have You Encouraged Anyone To Join?

Written By:CeramicsFanaticon06/08/08 at 12:10 pm

So you actually knew someone from this board since childhood? How nice!!! :) 8)

Yes...we've known each other since we were 13...

If you look on the 80's Photo thread, you should see a picture of the two of us together (in 1988)...

(Of course, we were adults by that time! :))

Subject:Re: Have You Encouraged Anyone To Join?

Written By:nallyon06/08/08 at 12:14 pm

Yes...we've known each other since we were 13...

If you look on the 80's Photo thread, you should see a picture of the two of us together (in 1988)...

(Of course, we were adults by that time! :))

I think I may have come across that picture a while back. I'll have to look at it again sometime. It's great that you have a friend you know in person on here! :)

Subject:Re: Have You Encouraged Anyone To Join?

Written By:whistledogon06/08/08 at 12:29 pm

Whatever happened to them?

They probably never kept an interest in the site or totally forgot about it

Subject:Re: Have You Encouraged Anyone To Join?

Written By:Step-chanon06/08/08 at 10:37 pm

I don't really know anyone I could've ask.

Subject:Re: Have You Encouraged Anyone To Join?

Written By:Badfinger-fanon06/09/08 at 12:51 pm

about 2 years ago, I got my friend in Las Vegas to join, lasvegasbill. he posted a little, but didn't get it into his daily routine

Subject:Re: Have You Encouraged Anyone To Join?

Written By:whistledogon06/09/08 at 3:38 pm

about 2 years ago, I got my friend in Las Vegas to join, lasvegasbill. he posted a little, but didn't get it into his daily routine

I remember him very well because he took away some of my arcade scores ;D

Subject:Re: Have You Encouraged Anyone To Join?

Written By:Howardon06/09/08 at 4:17 pm

I don't really know anyone I could've ask.

Me neither.

Subject:Re: Have You Encouraged Anyone To Join?

Written By:Philip Enoon06/26/08 at 1:53 am

There was someone named scarrier that was in the game room for a short amount of time. That was my brother Joel.Has he (your brother) had the urge to start posting?

Subject:Re: Have You Encouraged Anyone To Join?

Written By:nallyon06/26/08 at 10:52 pm

I remember him very well because he took away some of my arcade scores ;D

Must've been one of those fellers who might've come here mainly for the Arcade....lol. ;D

Subject:Re: Have You Encouraged Anyone To Join?

Written By:KKayon06/27/08 at 1:06 pm

My sis was here, my friend Sara was here for a while...after that, well, i say so much crap about my family and friends and work here that I don't dare

Subject:Re: Have You Encouraged Anyone To Join?

Written By:Philip Enoon07/02/08 at 2:08 am

It is not the way of life of my friends.

Subject:Re: Have You Encouraged Anyone To Join?

Written By:Foo Baron07/08/11 at 1:45 am

I've spent the past three months slowly trawling through every thread ever posted here for the past six years, and if it weren't for the fact that 99.99% (I defy you to try the experiment and prove me otherwise!) of the posts here are spam by people seeking to inflate their post counts, and 90% of the other 0.01% of the posts were from people seeking to drive off n00bs (and sorta-kinda-justifiably so, since 90% of the n00bs who've shown up over the past few years have turned out to be alts/sockpuppets of our resident stalker/troll Darko), I might have done so.

The place was fun while it lasted in the mid-00s. It's still got its moments, and I ain't leaving, but since late 2006/early 2007 (about the time we added a whole bunch of boards dedicated to spammish topics), it's been downhill ever since. One out of a thousand posts is worth mentioning, and at an average thread length of 1-2 pages, that's about one in ten thousand spams posts that are worth reading.

Relative to threads from 2005/6 (where I'd open 20 threads and find one or two worth reading, even if they ended up as successful resolutions of questions that needed no further comment), somwhere between 2007/8, I've realized I've spent more time clicking on every thread in order to mark it as read, than I have reading them. (Is there really anything worth reading in a three-year-dead thread of "List of songs beginning with X"? Gosh, I can't wait until next week, when I can finish with 2008 and move on to 2009 to find a dozen two-year dead threads about "List of songs beginning with X"...)

Just putting it out there, folks. Not judgin', just sayin'.

But Google, which has stopped indexing posts from this board, has noticed.

rebecca black site:inthe00s.com. We had a whole thread about "Friday". Never indexed.

pony site:inthe00s.com. That whole pony thing from a couple of months back? Ain't been looked at since 2004.

longest thread ever site:inthe00s.com The Longest Thread Ever? Google gave up on this place two years ago due to the spam.

If it's not on the Google, it doesn't exist, and I'd like to thank our most prolific posters for doing their part to make sure that this site is invisible to search engines.

So why in the name of all that's holy would anybody encourage anyone to join a message board that doesn't exist?

Subject:Re: Have You Encouraged Anyone To Join?

Written By:Henkon07/08/11 at 5:30 am

I've spent the past three months slowly trawling through every thread ever posted here for the past six years, and if it weren't for the fact that 99.99% (I defy you to try the experiment and prove me otherwise!) of the posts here are spam by people seeking to inflate their post counts, and 90% of the other 0.01% of the posts were from people seeking to drive off n00bs (and sorta-kinda-justifiably so, since 90% of the n00bs who've shown up over the past few years have turned out to be alts/sockpuppets of our resident stalker/troll Darko), I might have done so.

The place was fun while it lasted in the mid-00s. It's still got its moments, and I ain't leaving, but since late 2006/early 2007 (about the time we added a whole bunch of boards dedicated to spammish topics), it's been downhill ever since. One out of a thousand posts is worth mentioning, and at an average thread length of 1-2 pages, that's about one in ten thousand spams posts that are worth reading.

Relative to threads from 2005/6 (where I'd open 20 threads and find one or two worth reading, even if they ended up as successful resolutions of questions that needed no further comment), somwhere between 2007/8, I've realized I've spent more time clicking on every thread in order to mark it as read, than I have reading them. (Is there really anything worth reading in a three-year-dead thread of "List of songs beginning with X"? Gosh, I can't wait until next week, when I can finish with 2008 and move on to 2009 to find a dozen two-year dead threads about "List of songs beginning with X"...)

Just putting it out there, folks. Not judgin', just sayin'.

But Google, which has stopped indexing posts from this board, has noticed.

rebecca black site:inthe00s.com. We had a whole thread about "Friday". Never indexed.

pony site:inthe00s.com. That whole pony thing from a couple of months back? Ain't been looked at since 2004.

longest thread ever site:inthe00s.com The Longest Thread Ever? Google gave up on this place two years ago due to the spam.

If it's not on the Google, it doesn't exist, and I'd like to thank our most prolific posters for doing their part to make sure that this site is invisible to search engines.

So why in the name of all that's holy would anybody encourage anyone to join a message board that doesn't exist?

Subject:Re: Have You Encouraged Anyone To Join?

Written By:CatwomanofVon07/08/11 at 11:10 am

I've spent the past three months slowly trawling through every thread ever posted here for the past six years, and if it weren't for the fact that 99.99% (I defy you to try the experiment and prove me otherwise!) of the posts here are spam by people seeking to inflate their post counts, and 90% of the other 0.01% of the posts were from people seeking to drive off n00bs (and sorta-kinda-justifiably so, since 90% of the n00bs who've shown up over the past few years have turned out to be alts/sockpuppets of our resident stalker/troll Darko), I might have done so.

The place was fun while it lasted in the mid-00s. It's still got its moments, and I ain't leaving, but since late 2006/early 2007 (about the time we added a whole bunch of boards dedicated to spammish topics), it's been downhill ever since. One out of a thousand posts is worth mentioning, and at an average thread length of 1-2 pages, that's about one in ten thousand spams posts that are worth reading.

Relative to threads from 2005/6 (where I'd open 20 threads and find one or two worth reading, even if they ended up as successful resolutions of questions that needed no further comment), somwhere between 2007/8, I've realized I've spent more time clicking on every thread in order to mark it as read, than I have reading them. (Is there really anything worth reading in a three-year-dead thread of "List of songs beginning with X"? Gosh, I can't wait until next week, when I can finish with 2008 and move on to 2009 to find a dozen two-year dead threads about "List of songs beginning with X"...)

Just putting it out there, folks. Not judgin', just sayin'.

But Google, which has stopped indexing posts from this board, has noticed.

rebecca black site:inthe00s.com. We had a whole thread about "Friday". Never indexed.

pony site:inthe00s.com. That whole pony thing from a couple of months back? Ain't been looked at since 2004.

longest thread ever site:inthe00s.com The Longest Thread Ever? Google gave up on this place two years ago due to the spam.

If it's not on the Google, it doesn't exist, and I'd like to thank our most prolific posters for doing their part to make sure that this site is invisible to search engines.

So why in the name of all that's holy would anybody encourage anyone to join a message board that doesn't exist?

I never really pay any attention to my post count. I believe in quality not quantity. There have been many times I will read a thread but not post because...well...I had nothing to say. There are also many threads that I don't even read. You are right that many people here will post just for the sake of posting without adding anything to the conversation.

Just because we aren't on Google doesn't mean this place is worthwhile. Not being on Google may actually be a good thing.

I love this place-always have. Yeah, there are times when things here are super fun & exciting and other times when they can be a bit boring. That is like anyplace both in cyberspace & in the real world. But there are a lot of good people here who I do love and those people are the reason why I keep coming back.

Cat

Subject:Re: Have You Encouraged Anyone To Join?

Written By:Midason07/08/11 at 10:38 pm

I don't pay attention to post count neither. I've de-leeted and re-leeted several times. There have been times I've gotten tired of this place and times I've just had other things going on in my life.

This was the first forum I ever joined, back in 1999. I came on to answer some 80s music question, back when it was solely inthe80s.com. I started to open up a little more in 2002 when it was a YaBB board. I was probably most active in 2003, when I finally made REAL contact with a few people that were (or are still) members here. I was going through a divorce from my first wife and it was nice to have a support group of friends online. :)

Surprisingly, this messageboard (although not 80s exclusive but a majority of the core or first members joined because they like the 80s) still has more traffic than the other two 80s-related messageboards I frequent, but it's a lot slower than it once was. People move on. :-\\

I'd probably do a few things differently about my experience here, but I wouldn't trade it for anything. I've made some great friends here. :)

On topic, I think I may have encouraged one person to join, and maybe a couple to re-join.

Subject:Re: Have You Encouraged Anyone To Join?

LOL, yeah, sometimes I admit I'm part of the problem. There's usually at least a 5-10% ratio of content-to-filler ratio in the archives, but I snapped last night after I hit an exceptionally lame streak of 60+ consecutive dead threads, none of which contained any actual conversation. Hopefully tonight's mining will be a little better.

And yes, I'm just racking up my post count here. :P

Naw, I can always count on you to post quality over quantity - your knowledge of the Euro music scene is encyclopedic. Whenever I see you in a "Help me with this song" thread, it's a pretty safe bet you've already nailed it. (I'm pretty impressed with our collective track record; it's really rare that I find a thread with a find-a-song query that we weren't able to answer.)

Just because we aren't on Google doesn't mean this place is worthwhile.

There's nothing wrong with being a cozy little backwater of the 'net; it's part of the reason I hang around here too. But damn, I can see why a newbie who stumbles over us could come to the conclusion that there's nothing here but a bunch of bots. But without new users, boards eventually stagnate and die out. (We've already solved most of each other's pop culture mysteries, and when I finally get caught up on the last 3000 threads, I'm gonna want some new problems to solve. And I sure as hell ain't going to Yahoo Answers for 'em. Not when back in the day, we used to be greenlit on Fark.

(Of course, back in the day, the server could barely handle the load we put on it, so how it survived the onslaught of traffic from Fark is beyond me :)

Subject:Re: Have You Encouraged Anyone To Join?

Written By:Henkon07/09/11 at 1:30 am

LOL, yeah, sometimes I admit I'm part of the problem. There's usually at least a 5-10% ratio of content-to-filler ratio in the archives, but I snapped last night after I hit an exceptionally lame streak of 60+ consecutive dead threads, none of which contained any actual conversation. Hopefully tonight's mining will be a little better.

Been there, done that. ;)

Naw, I can always count on you to post quality over quantity - your knowledge of the Euro music scene is encyclopedic. Whenever I see you in a "Help me with this song" thread, it's a pretty safe bet you've already nailed it. (I'm pretty impressed with our collective track record; it's really rare that I find a thread with a find-a-song query that we weren't able to answer.)

I don't consider myself to be a music buff. It's just that I know where to look and how to look for it - which is beyond some of the original posters. ;D

There's nothing wrong with being a cozy little backwater of the 'net; it's part of the reason I hang around here too. But damn, I can see why a newbie who stumbles over us could come to the conclusion that there's nothing here but a bunch of bots. But without new users, boards eventually stagnate and die out. (We've already solved most of each other's pop culture mysteries, and when I finally get caught up on the last 3000 threads, I'm gonna want some new problems to solve. And I sure as hell ain't going to Yahoo Answers for 'em. Not when back in the day, we used to be greenlit on Fark.

(Of course, back in the day, the server could barely handle the load we put on it, so how it survived the onslaught of traffic from Fark is beyond me :)

I still have an account on Yahoo!Answers, but it's been quite a while since I last visited the site - let alone resolve a question. Somehow, though, I'm STILL awarded points for coming up with a top answer - three years or more after my original post! :o

Subject:Re: Have You Encouraged Anyone To Join?

Written By:karenon07/12/11 at 1:56 pm

and 90% of the other 0.01% of the posts were from people seeking to drive off n00bs (and sorta-kinda-justifiably so, since 90% of the n00bs who've shown up over the past few years have turned out to be alts/sockpuppets of our resident stalker/troll Darko),

I think this is the problem with the boards, and probably has been for a while. We got hit and hurt by one or two people and became justifiably suspicious of newbies. except that this also means that we can be incredibly harsh towards any newbie and drive them away.

The problem is finding a way of working out whether a noob is darko or not. You claim to be able to spot him. Why not clue some of us in on his 'giveaway' phrases. Then we can spot him and not get drawn into discussion with him thus allowing us to be better towards everyone else.

Subject:Re: Have You Encouraged Anyone To Join?

Written By:Foo Baron07/13/11 at 1:09 am

I think this is the problem with the boards, and probably has been for a while. We got hit and hurt by one or two people and became justifiably suspicious of newbies. except that this also means that we can be incredibly harsh towards any newbie and drive them away.

The problem is finding a way of working out whether a noob is darko or not. You claim to be able to spot him. Why not clue some of us in on his 'giveaway' phrases. Then we can spot him and not get drawn into discussion with him thus allowing us to be better towards everyone else.

What's the point? If we told him what we were looking for, he'd just change his tactics.

My policy is always to treat a potential n00b with respect until he/she/it proves him/her/itself unworthy of it. Who cares if any one - or all - of us gets trolled every few months if it means we pick up a new member or two every year. If we keep recruiting, and eventually the good posters will drive out the bad by force of sheer numbers. Or we could keep driving away the n00bs with paranoia, and a few of us can keep triggering Google's spamfilters with futile attempts to maximize post count (and for the sake of some rank that even advertisers don't care about) to ensure that nobody ever finds us, and then we'll collectively stagnate and die.

In my attempt to read every thread still accessible on this board, I've come across many an account that's visited recently, but whose last post was years ago. A glance at the posting history of some of those revealed material that was both on-topic and insightful. These people have kept their accounts active and visited semiregularly. Why'd you quit posting, lurkers?

Subject:Re: Have You Encouraged Anyone To Join?

Written By:karenon07/13/11 at 10:03 am

What's the point? If we told him what we were looking for, he'd just change his tactics.

I didn't mean publicly!

And I agree that we should 'chill' with newcomers and give them a chance.

Subject:Re: Have You Encouraged Anyone To Join?

Written By:ChuckyGon07/19/11 at 2:35 pm

But Google, which has stopped indexing posts from this board, has noticed.

rebecca black site:inthe00s.com. We had a whole thread about "Friday". Never indexed.

pony site:inthe00s.com. That whole pony thing from a couple of months back? Ain't been looked at since 2004.

longest thread ever site:inthe00s.com The Longest Thread Ever? Google gave up on this place two years ago due to the spam.

If it's not on the Google, it doesn't exist, and I'd like to thank our most prolific posters for doing their part to make sure that this site is invisible to search engines.

So why in the name of all that's holy would anybody encourage anyone to join a message board that doesn't exist?

err... Google doesn't index it, because I FORBID it in the robots.txt... This is by design, because the software folks don't give me an easy way to prevent crappy web spiders from indexing things that shouldn't be indexed, like the print version of a thread, or the "view all messages" links that completely fry the server when clicked on a super huge thread or some of the member profiles.

Google does however index the ARCHIVE because that is not blocked, and that is specifically designed for the search engine. Also, if you're looking for the longest thread ever to have a particular keyword indexed, it probably won't, because it won't index a freakishly huge page past X amount of words, where X is some value I have no idea about. I don't run the update script on the archive nearly as often as I should, so new topics don't show up there quick enough and google does frown on that. If the site wasn't so big I could run it daily, but instead it's more like every other month. I could potentially run it weekly (on Sunday) which might help things a bit on the google front.

Plus pushing the archive to google instead of the main board let's me run ads that actually get clicked on and generate money for the bills. Notice the 100% lack of ads when you're using the site? You won't see that on any other messageboard on the entire Internet. Smaller number of ads served with a higher click through from search engine visitors means a higher ad rate.

yes things are quieter here now than they were a few years ago. Thank Facebook for that, thank the loss of some popular members who no longer visit because they're too busy, or became a P.I.A. and got banned. Also the other sites I run aren't as busy as they once were, and we used to get more new members from that as well.

It's lots of stuff really, not one thing we can pull a trigger on and fix. The game threads are silly fluff, and are of zero interest to me, they exist for the people who like them and are not in the other boards so those who dislike them don't have to follow them.

And I agree that we should 'chill' with newcomers and give them a chance.

this a MILLION TIMES. we used to be a lot more welcoming here towards new members, and that sadly died with a few dedicated jerks making everyone suspicious.

Also it'd be nice if we start a separate thread on this topic instead of hashing it out in an old thread about asking whether someone has recommended someone new to join. There seems to be some sort of fear of starting new threads on the site I just don't understand. The more new threads the better I've always said. I have the highlighted topic on the front of the site to encourage people to start new threads.

Subject:Re: Have You Encouraged Anyone To Join?

Written By:Foo Baron07/19/11 at 9:47 pm

err... Google doesn't index it, because I FORBID it in the robots.txt... This is by design, because the software folks don't give me an easy way to prevent crappy web spiders from indexing things that shouldn't be indexed, like the print version of a thread, or the "view all messages" links that completely fry the server when clicked on a super huge thread or some of the member profiles.

Google does however index the ARCHIVE because that is not blocked, and that is specifically designed for the search engine.

Whoa, that's by design? Far out. (And I hadn't thought about the database load on a profile hit from a non-member... "All unread topics" is a little sluggish, but I thought you had to be logged in to use it.)

OK, Philip, Howard, Ninny, and the rest of y'all heavy posters, I owe y'all a huge apology. I really thought the big "G" was ignoring us because it wanted to, not because we wanted it to. Y'all owe me a few smites :)

Plus pushing the archive to google instead of the main board let's me run ads that actually get clicked on and generate money for the bills. Notice the 100% lack of ads when you're using the site? You won't see that on any other messageboard on the entire Internet. Smaller number of ads served with a higher click through from search engine visitors means a higher ad rate.

Yeah, I've noticed that, but didn't dare ask how you afforded it, beyond the fact that we're more of a sister site to the main amiright.com parody site. :)